Martian crust could sustain life through radiation

The article states, "Deep below the ground, radioactive elements disintegrate water molecules, producing ingredients that can fuel subterranean life. This process, known as radiolysis, has sustained bacteria in isolated, water-filled cracks and rock pores on Earth for millions to billions of years. Now a study published in Astrobiology contends that radiolysis could have powered microbial life in the Martian subsurface. Dust storms, cosmic rays and solar winds ravage the Red Planet's surface. But belowground, some life might find refuge. "The environment with the best chance of habitability on Mars is the subsurface," says Jesse Tarnas, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the new study’s lead author. Examining the Martian underground could help scientists learn whether life could have survived there — and the best subsurface samples available today are Martian meteorites that have crash-landed on Earth."

Okay, the surface of Mars we seem to know now is inhospitable to plant life and human life, including a toxic chemical in the Martian soil along with abundant cosmic radiation on the surface -lethal to plants and people. However, astrobiology holds out hope that life could still be on Mars under the surface as this article reports. What drives the science that seeks to establish life on Mars? In the mid-1990s we had meteorite ALH84001, well studied and published during the Clinton Administration and many reports said small, tiny life found in the rock. Later studies, this doctrine fell apart so the scientific method does work. However, why does science believe Mars had life in the past or present? My answer - abiogenesis. Abiogenesis took place on Earth and abiogenesis cannot be limited to just Earth if astrobiology is a science. We see this again in studies of the asteroid Ceres reported in the news.

Traces of Ceres' icy crust found at occator crater, https://phys.org/news/2021-08-ceres-icy-crust-occator-crater.html

My observation. The ~ 20 Myr crater age indicates a young surface age or young surface features, and comments in this report that state, "Prettyman said. "More broadly, as an ocean world, Ceres could be habitable and is therefore an attractive target for future missions." Such thinking introduces the possibility that abiogenesis took place on Ceres in our solar system and perhaps life is still there today.

When I looked into abiogenesis teaching in biology and astrobiology today, it appears the doctrine was established firmly in science by Charles Darwin *private letters* in the 1880s. The warm little pond and his private speculations on life arising via some chemical means (no special creation). Unlike Galileo telescope observations of the Galilean moons moving around Jupiter used against geocentric astronomy teachers, Charles Darwin's private letters served as the science foundation for abiogenesis. Others in science today have yet to observe non-living matter evolve into life using observations documented in the natural world. Galileo used natural world observations, abiogenesis fails here at present.
 
Other reports now indicate life may exist on the Martian moons too. The search for life on Mars expands to studying its moons, https://phys.org/news/2021-08-life-mars-moons.html

"A pair of researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has published a perspective piece in the journal Science outlining the efforts being conducted this decade to find out if Mars once hosted life. In their article, Ryuki Hyodo and Tomohiro Usui outline the three main efforts that are involved in looking for evidence of life on Mars over the next ten years, and explain why they and others at JAXA believe the best chance of finding evidence of life on Mars lies on one or both of its moons."

Another view of astrobiology and the pursuit of showing life on Mars. This report indicates impacts on Mars may have blasted tiny Martians onto the small moons there. Looks like a version of panspermia for Mars moons now. However, science views of life on Mars is committed to abiogenesis as the true explanation for the origin of life on Mars and throughout the universe. According to the report cited in this post, perhaps a type of panspermia took place on the small Martian moons too.
 

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